I’m well into the fourth quarter of my life and so far, it has been a pretty close game. Imagine, then, my surprise when I woke up one morning a few years ago and found that at some time in my sleep, I had made up my mind to chuck all those years of selective schooling and international travel and big city living to opt instead for life in a charming small town on the banks of the Chester River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
I was born in a big city (Pittsburgh). I went to a fancy New England prep school and a fancy New England college. I joined the Peace Corps. I went to another fancy New England university for grad school. I took a job that involved a lot of travel and counted over 80 countries on my “Visited” list. I took another job in another big city (Washington); I worked there more than 30 years before waking up on that October morning in 2011 with that small town—Chestertown—smack dab in the middle of my mind.
Within a couple of months, I owned a home there. It’s in the Historic District and although my wife and I have named it Standing Room Only for all-too-obvious reasons, it has a welcoming front porch that is my window on the world. People walk by, they stop and chat, and then, depending on the time of day, they may even come up for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or a wee dram of whisky. In exchange for libation, I get my daily share of town news and my stake in town life gets pounded down another inch or two.
People say that not much happens here. Boy, are they wrong! Just as much happens here as in any big city or any other country; the only difference is that life doesn’t pass you by. You step in it. You know the neighbor getting married or the man who just died; you know who recently got a puppy or whose business is closing or why the woman in the soup aisle at the grocery store seems a little lost, all the little daily dramas that make up the soap opera of life in a small town like ours.
Because if city living is anonymous, life in a small town is anything but. We’re connected here. Like an old switchboard operator, we listen in on each other’s conversations. We chat at the market, we gather for coffee at Evergrain or Sam’s or a drink at JR’s or The Fish Whistle or The Blue Bird or The Kitchen, we commiserate over a glass of white and a cheese board at the Wine & Cheese Shop—all the things people used to do before smart phones stormed the castle. By the way, speaking of smart phones, the wifi in town can be pretty spotty so don’t plan to check your email or text your friend from the coffee shop anytime soon. You may, instead, fall into conversation with the one person who really does know what’s going on down at the marina…or at least says she does.
Not that we gossip. Well, maybe just a little. After all, if information is currency in a small town, then we’re all rich as Croesus here or trying hard to be. I’m not sure why that appeals to me, but it does. Maybe it has something to do with the lack of rat race here. If there’s no rat race, then maybe there’s more human race and that is infinitely more interesting. I mean who wants to win a rat race anyway? Not me. I’ll take another wee dram on the porch any day.
After careers in both international development (Special Olympics) and secondary education (Landon School), Jamie Kirkpatrick bought a home on the Eastern Shore in 2011. Now he’s a happily married freelance writer and photographer who plays golf and the bagpipes with equal facility. Jamie’s writing and photography have appeared in The Baltimore Sun and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is currently at work on a new book called “Musing Right Along.
Evan Thalenberg says
I love this article. Jamie illuminates, with warm clarity, the lure of small town charm and in doing so makes the rest of us yearn for the front porch.